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Aside from currently holding the title of most hated professional class in America (that lovely prize used to belong to lawyers), MBAs share several peculiar experiences, rituals, rites of passage and downright peculiarities. I don’t imply that we all belong to secret organizations for self promotion or join conspiracies aimed to control the US economy. Ok, maybe some of us do. And, maybe when I attain a higher level of success, I’ll receive a key to the secret vault under Wall Street where thirteen bankers smoke cigars while running the world. But until then, I only mean that, more than other professionals, MBAs share experience with a set of strange measuring exercises forged during the two year mash of academics, profligacy and debauchery that comprises business school.

While I certainly partook in the profligacy, debauchery and, at times, academics, I never participated in any of the seemingly unending personality and career type testing. Simply put, I don’t like to be prodded as a specimen. Ok, it’s not a probing by alien abductors; however, I simply never felt the need to sit for hours of monotonous questioning about my choices, behaviors and beliefs simply to produce some coded interpretation of my personality like ZTRM. I know my personality, and I like it! If I need further interpretation, I’ll have my tea leaves read.

I still can’t believe that I made it through an entire MBA program without ever taking the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. All of these years, ignorant of my “type” and my “best career fit,” until last week, when my best friend’s aunt dropped her Macbook Pro on my lap and asked me to take it. (If you want me to do anything, send a pretty blonde. Done.)

INTJ or INFJ… I found myself stuck between the F and the T. Apparently, T stands for thinking and F stands for feeling; and, each version of the test that I take keeps spitting out I, N and J but continues vacillating on the F or the T. All of a sudden, I grew worried and insecure. Am I thinker or a feeler? What does that mean for my career? And now I know why I never took this stupid test!

Even more troubling, I face a much bigger I vs. E problem. Apparently, the I, which stands for introverted, means that I’ll never be a CEO, because almost all CEOs are E. Excellent, the one job I really want. I guess being extroverted (E) makes one a good CEO… actually, all we really know is that it makes one good at becoming a CEO. As we all know, most CEOs suck.

This is what you get when you teach people to emphasize quantitative analyses… a bunch of surveys that judge and answer everyone and everything. Is it any wonder that markets blew up because of over reliance on mathematical models? Is it any wonder that the data driven executives at dating sites use tests to hook people up? My advice: stop taking those tests. Just do it the old fashioned way and start dating someone! If you aren’t compatible, you’ll find out in three months, after you’ve had sex sixty seven times. Why find out now and miss all the fun?

And why am I so irritated, aside from the fact that I’ll apparently never be a CEO and the fact that I tend to disdain anything that limits sexual congress? Because all of this stuff limits choice! Listening to a test that tells you that you can’t do something or you wouldn’t be right for someone cedes personal choice. As a choice loving member of my generation, I just can’t stomach that!

By the way, the test was so right. I am such an INTJ or INFJ… and one of the top careers for them is: writer.

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